The Moroccan Paradox: Between Tangible Progress and Social Disenchantment... 204
Macroeconomic and social indicators paint the picture of a Morocco in profound transformation. Today's Morocco bears little resemblance to that of the early post-independence decades. Life expectancy, which stagnated around half a century in the 1960s, now exceeds three-quarters of a century. Policies on electrification, drinking water access, schooling, and healthcare coverage have yielded visible results, even if pockets of fragility persist. The country has gained nearly thirty years of life expectancy and significantly reduced poverty. Consumption patterns have diversified, domestic tourism has grown, and leisure practices have spread. Social behaviors are gradually aligning with those seen in upper-middle-income countries, if not beyond.
Yet, this overall positive situation coexists with a diffuse sense of malaise. Pessimism persists, coupled with growing distrust of political institutions, manifesting as civic disenchantment. How to explain this gap between measurable, tangible progress and a collective sentiment sometimes marked by self-deprecation?
Economically, despite exogenous shocks, pandemic, repeated droughts, geopolitical tensions, imported inflation, the trajectory remains broadly upward. The boom in infrastructure, development of export industries (automotive, aeronautics, phosphate and derivatives), the rise of services, and progressive integration into global value chains are regularly praised by international institutions, which are unanimous on the country's resilience and advances in human development. Urban planning and beautification are simply stunning.
By the data alone, life is indisputably "better" in Morocco today than twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago. Yet, this objective improvement does not mechanically translate into a sense of well-being.
Well-being is never measured in absolute terms. It is built through comparison: with yesterday, with others, with what one perceives as possible or legitimate. As society progresses, expectations rise, diversify, and become more demanding. Citizens no longer settle for access to basic services; they aspire to quality, recognition, and dignity.
The widespread access to information and social networks has amplified this hall of mirrors. Western living standards, globalized consumption patterns, and lifestyles of local or international elites are constantly on display. The frame of reference no longer stops at the neighboring village or previous generation but extends to far wealthier societies or privileged minorities. This imagined gap between what is and what is seen, sometimes fantasized, fuels frustration that can coexist with real improvements in material conditions.
Thus, the sense of downward mobility reflects less an objective regression than a mismatch between rapidly expanding aspirations and economic, social, and institutional responses progressing at a pace deemed insufficient.
Progress does not mask persistent fractures. Gaps between urban and rural worlds, coastal regions and hinterlands, socioeconomic categories are narrowing but remain stark in perception and feeling. The middle class feels it is navigating a zone of uncertainty. It enjoys a higher standard of living than the previous generation but feels vulnerable. Even with positive macroeconomic indicators, many households' difficulty in projecting serenely into the medium term—planning projects, anticipating social mobility, securing retirement—feeds a diffuse anxiety. Uncertainty, more than poverty in the strict sense, becomes a central factor in the malaise.
This unease extends beyond the economic or social sphere. It finds a powerful amplifier in the crisis of trust toward political actors. Opinion polls show growing distrust of parties, elected officials, and mediating institutions. Achievements are not sufficiently explained or embodied by credible leaders, and many citizens feel inequity, pinning their sentiment on politics.
Politics is often seen as a closed space, dominated by careerism and clientelism. Expectations in electoral alternations are regularly disappointed, leading to frustration spilling over the entire political field. Politicians become symbolic receptacles for a malaise that far exceeds their actual actions.
This phenomenon is reinforced by the temporality of public policies. Many reforms, educational, social, territorial, produce long-term effects, while citizens demand quick, tangible results in daily life. Lacking pedagogy, transparency, and collective narrative, public policies remain abstract, their benefits invisible or attributed to other factors.
Moroccan pessimism does not necessarily take the form of radical contestation. It often manifests as "gentle nihilism": electoral abstention, associational disengagement, retreat into the private sphere, rise of irony and cynicism in public debate, self-deprecating discourse about the country itself. This climate erodes confidence in the collective capacity to transform reality.
This nihilism is ambivalent. It coexists with strong aspirations for individual success and international recognition of the country. It does not signal rejection of progress but doubt about the system's ability to offer prospects to all, not just the usual beneficiaries.
The challenge for Morocco thus goes beyond the economic or social dimension. It is also symbolic and political. How to ensure tangible progress translates into a shared sense of collective advancement? How to reconnect individual trajectories with a clear, credible vision of the future?
Without a shared narrative, even positive figures struggle to convince. The Moroccan paradox is not that of a stagnant country but of a society in motion, traversed by constant tension between real progress and hopes. It is in the ability to transform this tension into reform energy that the future largely lies.
The CAN, with circulating videos conveying foreign satisfaction and astonishment at Morocco's progress, could be the hoped-for turning point.
Life is good in Morocco.
